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Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. ~ Werner Heisenberg

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

When the imaginationsleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. … there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

"When I use a word", Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less". "The question is", said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things". "The question is", said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all".

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1934; first published in 1872), chapter 6, p. 205.

Words matter. Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter when you are president.

Not only the tools of manual labour, but also the tools of human thought — words — are subject to the laws of historical development. The history of the meanings of words is outside the area of interest of formal logic, and could not be fruitfully studied by the methods of that discipline.

The history of language in what is its most essential content is the history of language as a social instrument of thought; it is historical epistemology which cannot be studied within the scope of any other discipline.

The linguist is of necessity only marginally interested in all conventional terminology, whereas certain votaries of formal logic are inclined to investigate domains which are alien to linguistics and even to some extent in contradiction to its basic assumptions!

The Letheri are masters at corrupting words, their meanings. They call warpeace, they call tyrannyliberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word's meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they see how those others are deceived and made into fools because they choose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.

Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. We often know that they can be applied to a wide range of inner or outer experience, but we practically never know precisely the limits of their applicability. This is true even of the simplest and most general concepts like "existence" and "space and time". Therefore, it will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.
The concepts may, however, be sharply defined with regard to their connections... a group of connected concepts may be applicable to a wide field of experience and will help us to find our way in this field. But the limits of the applicability will in general not be known, at least not completely...

Werner Heisenberg, in Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958), lectures delivered at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, Winter 1955-56.

Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.

Aldous Huxley, as reported by Laura Huxley, in conversation with Alan Watts, about This Timeless Moment, in Pacifica Archives #BB2037

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

'Tis a strange mystery, the power of words !
Life is in them, and death. A word can send
The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek,
Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn
The current cold and deadly to the heart.
Anger and fear are in them ; grief and joy
Are on their sound ; yet slight, impalpable:—
A word is but a breath of passing air.

Without approval and without scorn, but carefully studying the sentences word by word, one should trace them in the Discourses (Sutta) and verify them by the Discipline (Vinaya). If they are neither traceable in the Discourses nor verifiable by the Discipline, one must conclude thus: ‘Certainly, this is not the Blessed One’s utterance; this has been misunderstood by that bhikkhu — or by that community, or by those elders, or by that elder.’ In that way, bhikkhus, you should reject it.

Every word carries its own surprises and offers its own rewards to the reflective mind. Their amazing variety is a constant delight. I do not believe that I am alone in this—a fascination with words is shared by people in all countries and all walks of life.

Judas: I remember when this whole thing began
No talk of God then, we called you a man
And believe me, my admiration for you hasn't died.
But every word you say today
Gets twisted round some other way
And they'll hurt if they think you've lied.

O they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1595-6), Act V, scene 1, line 42. The word appears in Beaumont and Fletcher—Mad Lover, Act I. Also in Complaynt of Scotland, written before Shakespeare was born.

O, but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that no more must say is listen'd more.

Words that warmed women, wooed and won them, snipped the final thread of inhibition and gratified the male egos of ungrateful lovers; ... for which they were eternally in his debt, for which they may eternally hate him.

For the word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and [their] marrow, and [is] able to discern thoughts and intentions of [the] heart. 13 And there is not a creation that is not manifest to his sight, but all things are naked and openly exposed to the eyes of him with whom we have an accounting.

For some queer and deplorable reason most human beings are more impressed by words than by figures, to the great disadvantage of mankind.

Jan Tinbergen. "The necessity of quantitative social research." Sankhyā: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Series B (1973): 141-148.

Words matter to writers, scholars, diplomats, lawyers and therapists, but they aren’t everything, and they certainly don’t have any magical powers. The United States and its allies could have beaten Adolf Hitler just as easily if nobody on our side even once uttered “National Socialist German Worker’s Party.” In fact, that’s pretty much what happened. Calling our enemies “Nazis” and leaving it at that was perfectly sufficient when coupled with Allied air, sea and land power. I’d be willing to bet that a large majority of Americans aren’t even aware anymore that the National Socialist German Worker’s Party was the longform name of the Nazi Party. If anyone in the Roosevelt administration said, “we can’t just call them Nazis, we have to make it clear that we’re fighting the National Socialist German Worker’s Party,” they’d have been laughed out of the room.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

Mark Twain, letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888, solicited for and printed in George Bainton, The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners (1890), pp. 87–88. (Twain adapts a metaphor due to Josh Billings, from Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax, "January 1871").

Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe.

Boys flying kites haul in their white winged birds;
You can't do that way when you're flying words.
"Careful with fire," is good advice we know
"Careful with words," is ten times doubly so.
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead;
But God Himself can't kill them when they're said.

The Moral is that gardeners pine,
Whene'er no pods adorn the vine.
Of all sad words experience gleans,
The saddest are: "It might have beans."
(I did not make this up myself:
'Twas in a book upon my shelf.
It's witty, but I don't deny
It's rather Whittier than I).

It used to be a common saying of Myson's that men ought not to seek for things in words, but for words in things; for that things are not made on account of words but that words are put together for the sake of things.

Garrick tells of the power of George Whitefield's voice, "he could make men either laugh or cry by pronouncing the word Mesopotamia." Related by Francis Jacox. An old woman said she found great support in that comfortable word Mesopotamia. See Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,
Lasst mich auch endlich Thaten sehn.

The words you've bandied are sufficient;
'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.

My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lustres
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words." When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a "weasel word" after another there is nothing left of the other.

Theodore Roosevelt, speech at St. Louis (May 31, 1916). "Weasel word" taken from a story by Stewart Chaplin in Century Magazine, June, 1900.

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
* * * * *
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

As the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, "Adsum!" and fell back. It was the word we used at school, when names were called; and lo, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master.

The words are like Jack in a Box, and nobody knows what to make of them.

Roll, C.J., Parker v. Cook (1650), Style's Rep. 241.

Is not the Judge bound to know the meaning of all words in the English language; or if they are used technically or scientifically, to inform his own mind by evidence, and then to determine the meaning?

Martin, B., Hills v. The London Gaslight Co. (1857), 27 L. J. Ex. 63.

Qiue ad unumfinem loqunta sunt, non debent ad alium detorqueri: Those words which are spoken to one end, ought not to be perverted to another.

He says one thing, but he does another; it seems to me to be common sense to look at what is done, and not to what is said.

Martin, B., Caine v. Coulson (1863), 1 H. & C. 764; 32 L. J. Ex. 97.

We must judge of men's intentions by their acts, and not by expressions in letters, which are contrary to their acts.

Lord Abinger, Chapman v. Morton (1843), 11 M. & W. 534.

Words are transient, and vanish in the air as soon as spoken, and there can be no tenor of them . . . but when a thing is written, though every omission of a letter may not make a variance, yet, if such omission makes a word of another signification, it is fatal.